On Friday morning, Will sat impatiently in the car, waiting for Alice and Lily to appear. He had done his best to talk himself into believing that Alice’s departure was for the best. She had worked really hard on the open day, but she didn’t really fit in here, he reminded himself constantly. She had been right. There would be nothing for her to do on St Bonaventure, and she would soon get bored and restless. Look how little time it had taken for her to get fed up with staying with Beth. Far better for her to go now than to hang around until her frustration soured everything.
He should never have asked her to stay, Will told himself, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and glancing at his watch for the umpteenth time. Alice had a pattern of running away at the first suggestion of commitment. She had always done it, and she always would. For someone with such forceful opinions, she was pathetic when it came to taking risks.
Will was conscious of the growing resentment inside him, which he fed deliberately because it was easier to be angry with Alice than to contemplate life when she was gone. Why had she had to come and upset everything? She could have stayed with Roger and Beth. They could have met a couple of times for some polite conversation and everything would have been fine. But no! She’d had to come and live with them. She had turned his world upside down all over again. She had made him fall in love with her all over again, and, now that she had made sure that she was right at the centre of his life and Lily’s, she was going to leave them both feeling desolate.
Now the tension between them was worse than ever. They hardly talked about anything except the open day. The only way they could communicate was in bed, where they made love with a fierceness and an intensity that left them both shattered. Will didn’t know whether it making things better or worse. He just knew that his stomach felt as if a heavy stone were lodged inside it.
If nothing else, the delay allowed an outlet for his feelings. He leant on the horn. ‘If you’re not ready in two minutes, you can get a taxi,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘We’re coming!’
Alice and Lily came hurrying down the steps from the front door. Alice was holding Lily’s hand and had a straw hat in the other. Will didn’t know whether it was deliberate or not, but she was wearing the green dress she had worn at the party when he had first seen her again. She even had the same silly shoes on. It was almost as if she was making an effort to revert to the brittle, superficial person she had seemed then.
His daughter looked charming in a floppy hat, pink shoes, and a straight pink shift that Will didn’t recall seeing before.
‘New dress?’ he asked, cocking an eye over his shoulder as she clambered into the back seat and Alice helped her fix her seat belt.
‘Alice bought it for me.’
‘A goodbye present,’ Alice explained, getting in beside Will and settling herself with much smoothing and twitching of her skirt. ‘I thought it was time to get her used to the idea of me going,’ she added in an undertone as Will let out the clutch.
Big of her, thought Will sourly, resenting the way she seemed to treat the matter so practically.
‘I don’t want her to go,’ said Lily, whose hearing was better than Alice had imagined.
Now look at the mess Alice had left him in. It was all very well for Alice, swanning back to her oh-so-important career in London, but he was going to be left trying to find a way to comfort a desolate daughter, and he had know idea how he was going to do it.
‘Alice has to go home,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll like Helen. She sounds nice.’
Lily’s bottom lip stuck out. ‘I don’t want Helen. I want Alice.’
‘I’m not going yet,’ Alice interrupted, determinedly bright. ‘So let’s all enjoy today.’
She might be able to enjoy it, Will thought darkly, but he couldn’t. The only advantage was that he was too busy to think much. The open day proved to be a surprisingly popular event and, once the government minister’s tour was out of the way, a steady stream of curious visitors came in to look around and find out what the project was all about and how it would affect them. Fishermen mixed with the expatriate crowd Alice had persuaded to come with a view to drumming up some financial support, and between them all ran what seemed like hordes of children who had got a whiff of the prizes. Alice’s competition was a huge success, and even some of the adults tried it for fun.
It was a hot day, but Alice was cool and elegant at the centre of it all. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who had rolled laughing with him in bed, her hair tickling his chest and her mouth curving against his skin, and his heart twisted as he watched her.
She seemed to be everywhere, organizing children, making sure people had drinks, smiling and talking, working unobtrusively to make the day a success. He couldn’t help thinking that it would be easier for him if she were being selfish and false. As it was, her every move seemed designed to underline how much he would miss her when she was gone.
And how little she herself cared.
Alice was not, in fact, enjoying the day as much as Will thought. It was a huge effort to keep the smile fixed to her face, especially when she kept catching glimpses of Will between the crowds. He was dressed rather more smartly today in honour of the minister, but she noticed that he talked to the fishermen in exactly the same way as he talked to the politician.
He’d told her that he only had the rudiments of the local language which he had picked up on previous trips, but he seemed to Alice to be able to communicate perfectly well, laughing and joking with the locals or explaining the project’s objectives. She only had to look at how people reacted to him to know that he was able to do that clearly and without being condescending or patronising.
Studying him through the milling crowds, Alice was struck anew by the cool self-containment that set him apart from the others, and she was engulfed suddenly in a giddying thrill of pride and possession that she was the only one there who knew how the muscles flexed when she ran her palms over his back, who knew the taste of his skin, how warm and sure his hands felt.
Her breath shortened as she watched him, and her mouth was dry, and for the umpteenth time since that awful night on the verandah she dithered. Stay, he had asked her, and she had said no. Was she making a terrible mistake? Sometimes, like now, it felt as if saying goodbye would be the hardest thing she had ever done. And why do it if she didn’t need to?
But, if today proved anything, it was that Will’s career was as important to him as hers was to her. His marine research was an integral part of him, and she clung to her work as the one thing she had ever been able to feel sure of. She loved Will, Alice realised sadly. She just couldn’t be sure whether she loved him enough to give up everything else that mattered to her, and, unless she
‘Alice!’
Startled out of her gloomy thoughts, Alice turned to see Roger and Beth advancing on her, both smiling broadly, and quickly she fixed her own smile back into place.
‘It’s lovely to see you,’ she said, hugging first one then the other. ‘Thank you for coming-and for all those prizes, Roger! They’ve been a huge success with the children.’
‘Where’s Will?’
Alice didn’t even have to look. She was always aware of where he was and what he was doing. ‘Over there,’ she said, indicating to where Will stood talking to a group of fishermen.
Rather overwhelmed by all the strangers, Lily was leaning against his leg, nibbling her thumb, and he had a reassuring hand on her head. Every time she saw them close together, a choked feeling clogged Alice’s throat and she had to bite her lip.
Roger whistled soundlessly. ‘What a change in them both! Is that thanks to you, Alice?’
‘They just needed time to get used to each other,’ said Alice, but deep down she hoped that she
She would have nobody.
Roger wandered off to have a word with someone he recognized, and Beth turned to Alice with mock reproach. ‘We’ve hardly seen you recently!’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ said Alice, guiltily aware that she had been so involved with Will and Lily that she hadn’t given her old friends the attention they deserved. ‘It’s been…busy.’
‘Well, as long as you’ve been having a good time.’
